Crash victim a longtime St. Augustine resident

Catherine Smith, 89, was killed in wreck Saturday

No matter what happened to her, Catherine Smith never could be talked into leaving Florida.

The longtime St. Augustine resident lost her husband and was losing her eyesight, but brother Albert Bachman said he still couldn’t convince her to move back to her home state of Pennsylvania.

Smith, 89, died in her adopted hometown on Saturday when the car she was riding in with brother-in-law William Sopper was involved in a crash on U.S. 1 near Southwood Lake Drive. Sopper is still in intensive care at Shands Jacksonville, Bachman said.

“She loved Florida,” Bachman said. “I tried to get her to come back and live with me.

“She wouldn’t hear of moving. She wouldn’t hear of going to a nursing home.”

Bachman said his older sister was twice widowed, most recently with Ben Smith of St. Augustine. She took care of him when he was ill, and Bachman said he asked her to move after her husband’s death.

And when macular degeneration led to near blindness, he suggested again that she move north. He was rebuffed again.

Smith was simply too independent, he said.

And it would have been a tough transition. Bachman said Smith fell in love with Florida when she and her first husband honeymooned in South Florida. So in 1947, they moved to the Miami area, where she worked as a secretary for Pam-Am.

Eventually, she made it up the coast and settled in St. Augustine for the rest of her life.

Smith was a fixture at the Ponce Lodge and Country Club, where she worked under general manager Jim Ferguson.

“Catherine was kind of the glue who held everything together,” said Ferguson, who was general manager from 1981 to ’86.

“She wasn’t a secretary; she was my administrative assistant. She wasn’t a filing clerk. She was more part of the management team.”

It makes sense that she would end up working at a golf club. Bachman said the family, which included middle sister Marie, grew up playing at Reading Country Club. Their father was the general manager there, and he was a friend of golf legend Byron Nelson.

“She developed a lifetime love for golf,” Bachman said. “Even when she couldn’t play anymore, she watched all the tournaments. Even when she couldn’t see that well, she would listen to them.”

Ferguson said he stayed in touch with Smith, even though they hadn’t worked together for many years. They had spoken on the phone just a few weeks before her death.

“She was a marvelous person,” Ferguson said. “Very kind woman, always had good words for anyone. She was one of the bedrocks of the Ponce Lodge and Country Club — well-loved and well-respected.”